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A judgement in the Auckland District Court this week shows that resident Kiwis are responsible for any law-breaking they commit in cyberspace, no matter where their servers are located.

Philip Carlton Batty attempted to defend charges of possessing and distributing objectionable material by claiming that the website he operated was not located within NZ but offshore.

In a sensible move, the judge appears to have ruled that the server location is irrelevant and that it's the defendant's actions (ie: making the stuff available) that makes him culpable.

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However, this raises some interesting issues...

As discussed in yesterday's column, there are some countries where it is quite legal to publish material that would, here in NZ, be considered objectionable.

So what happens if a Kiwi travels offshore and establishes a website and business that offers pay-to-view access to such images?

Take Germany as an example where, it appears, images of naked adolescents as young as 14 years of age are quite legal.

If a Kiwi moved to Germany and set up such a site, would they be liable to prosecution on their return to New Zealand?

Surely one interpretation of this week's court judgement would be that the Kiwi concerned *had* broken NZ law and therefore could be arrested at the airport and prosecuted -- even though he'd not actually broken the law while in NZ.

Perhaps one could defend such charges by claiming that, since the website was not set up while the person was actually in NZ and was operated while he/she was outside NZ's jurisdiction then NZ law should not apply.

And what happens if some entrepreneurial German who may, unknown to NZ authorities, run such a website -- and who moves to New Zealand to live?

If he retains ownership of the website but doesn't actually remain involved in the day-to-day operation of it -- does he become just as guilty as the Mr Batty who got punished by our courts this week?

It's starting to look as if (as I've said many times before) things are going to get increasingly messy from a legal perspective, if some kind of consistency in laws applying to the Net aren't forged between all "connected" nations.

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